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Abstract:

This research program investigated the reasonable
possibility that differential information processing
strategies can be manifestations of racist prejudgments.
Our research design applies a technique often used in
social cognition studies. This technique captures
evidence of a rather habit-driven (though not
instantaneous) decision made by subjects rapidly presented
with information about (typically fictional) characters.
These target characters are associated (in the context of
the experiment) with some form of generalized expectancy
(i.e., they are typically presented as a likable or
unlikable person). This is accomplished either by
creating the expectancy artificially, or by using targets
that are members of a conspicuously or notably-stereotyped
group. The rather non-conscious decision involved is one
of either bolstering one's pre-conceived notions or
engaging in inconsistency resolution (e.g., either
marshaling evidence to bolster your prejudicial
expectation or pondering more earnestly those pieces of
information which are inconsistent with your expectancy or
well-known prejudicial stereotypes).
Typically, the likelihood of pursuing one strategy
or the other is manipulated in experimental settings by
first providing an artificial expectation, then altering
the structure of the person-memory task or adjusting the
rate of information flow to the subjects. We hoped to
reveal how a non-artificial pre-existing race-based
prejudicial expectancy (of a largely non-evaluative as in
non-likable/dislikable nature) might effect the pursuit of
one strategy or the other. By and large, tests of our five
hypotheses provide only mixed support for use of a person-
memory associative network model in this context. The
first and second
hypotheses have some visual support (i.e., recall
proportions across sentence types start out roughly equal
for low prejudicial expectation - PE -- subjects then
branch out; high PE subjects seem to treat sentence types
differently from the start); however, these differences
are not amenable to clearly interpretable statistical tests.
Analysis of the third and fourth hypotheses was
confounded
because the candidate contaminating covariate failed to
have consistent effects. This, coupled with the floor
effect of the PE scale, the unexplained (and substantial)
variability in recall behavior, and some other control
issues (detailed below), made the use of the continuous
DVs less than fruitful. The floor effect of the PE scale
was especially problematic - with many subjects compressed
at this floor, relations would be difficult to see even if
present. In an attempt to detect weak effects of
prejudice, we aggregated subjects by PE (as in high and
low prejudice). Aggregation probably made the floor
effect-driven range restriction less problematic
(the subjects lumped together on PE's floor are probably
less-afflicted with well-practiced prejudicial
expectations than the high half of PE scorers). This
exercise generated weak support for the third
hypothesis: the time interval data feebly indicates that
high PE subjects manifest a negative impression-centered
person-memory schema in their storage of sentences about
a Black target - and, unlike the low PE subjects, they
apparently do this starting with the earliest blocks of
sentences.
The median split approach failed to generate support for
the fourth hypothesis - where we expected to see
bolstering replace inconsistency resolution (in the slow
condition) since subjects were afforded the time. There
was weak evidence, however, that more inconsistency
resolution was occurring in the fast condition (as the
proposed model had predicted). This
evidence was in the form of greater recall time interval
differences seen when comparing high PE subjects and
their schema-speeded versus non-speeded intervals. The
bottom line for the first four hypotheses is still
this: we failed to create a condition where prejudice
would paradoxically favor recall of laudable or admirable
inconsistencies associated with a fictitious Black
target.
The fifth hypothesis was just intended to verify that
racial prejudice does not predict recall behavior when the
target is White and so are the subjects. So using a White
target, we performed the same sort of tests seen above.
Fortunately, relations with PE ranged from weak to very
weak - and, of course, were non-significant. In sum,
these outcomes suggest that Hastie-Srull associative
network (H-SAN) processing effects may not reliably or
consistently
manifest themselves in the prejudiced rater/performance
appraisal arena -- at least not in designs similar to
those used previously to illustrate H-SAN effects. There
were some clear exceptions, however, in our data. Taken
together, our results suggest that H-SAN mechanisms may
apply when appraising performance potential, but have a
difficult time manifesting themselves in substantial ways.

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